My little baby bump

For those who wanted to see...

Note: this picture was taken right after eating dinner, so that's also contributing to the bump. I don't think I'm really this big yet. Although my appetite has been ravenous the past two days! So I know I'm bound to grow much more soon.

Irritated

Lately I've been extra irritable it seems. I'm not in a bad mood at all, I just find some thing really irritate me! I'll share:

1) Radio music in the car. I usually always listen to music while I'm driving. It keeps me alert and entertained. But lately, every song that plays irritates me! It's either been way overplayed, has repetitive lyrics that drive me crazy, or it's just plain annoying. So I've been driving in silence that past while. I need to get some books on tape or something.

2) Potholes. Chicago streets can be quite dangerous to drive on this time of year. Since this winter seems to have been extra cold and more snowy than in the past, there are significantly more potholes! Cannot avoid them. And some are huge, gaping holes that could cause some serious danger to my car if I'm not careful! Some roads you practically need four-wheel drive just to get through!

3) Slow drivers. It seems like every time I go to get on Lake Shore Drive (the mini-highway by our house that runs along the lake) I get stuck behind some slow driver. I'm always tempted to honk my horn and yell "go a little faster!" I really don't try to drive real fast or anything. I just get irritated by people who don't pay attention to anything around them when they're driving.

4) Headaches. For the past week or two I've had a headache every day. It usually sets on after I eat lunch. I take Tylenol, but it does nothing for the heachaches. Tylenol never has helped my heachaches, but I'm not allowed to take anything else! Really stinks. My dr. said it could just be pregnancy related. So in the mean time, I'm just trying to stay hydrated and deal with them.

5) Cockroaches. Last year we had a little bit of a cockroach problem (I know, GROSS!!) See, we live right above our building's basement/storage area/junk area/laundry area, and lots of little critters live there and made their way up to us through the floor and wall cracks. Finally, they disappeared and we haven't had a problem! Until this past week that is. I saw a big one right outside our apartment door one morning, I screamed probably waking up all the neighbors, and ran for the roach killer. I killed it, then sprayed all the cracks in our apartment. I don't want to find ANY inside! If I do, I'll seriously have to think about moving. They give me the heebie geebies.

6) Vacuums with bags. I went to the store today to try to find more bags for our vacuum. They have to be a certain size you see, and this was the third store I tried, thinking they would for sure have them. They didn't have any though!! Ugh. I've never had a problem finding vacuum bags in the six years I've had my vacuum. It still works great and everything, but I guess it may be time to upgrade to a bagless vacuum. Seems to be the trend these days.


Writing all these things makes me sound like such a negative person! Despite the things that irritate me, there are lots of things that make me happy lately. I should probably share these just to balance out the irritations.

1) I have a clean house and all my laundry is done! That's got to be one of the best feelings.

2) I haven't had any nausea for about a week now! It's been great, and I found that taking my vitamins in the evening as opposed to in the morning really helps.

3) I'm starting to get a visible baby bump! Several people have commented that they can tell I'm starting to show. This makes me happy because it means I'm leaving the "I just feel and look fat" stage.

4) I bought a new shower curtain! We needed new bath mats anyway, and I decided our bathroom needed a little more color. Before, we had plain white bath mats (which I probably won't ever do again, they just get too dirty) and a plain white shower curtain. Now I have chocolate brown bath mats and a cream/brown/green striped shower curtain.

5) I have a great hubby! He's been gone long hours every day, but still is able to help out with the cleaning, cooking, and shopping. He's great!

Fun with the scanner

I recently acquired a new printer/copier/scanner/faxer machine, given to us for free by someone in our ward who no longer needed it. I was super excited because for the past few months I had already been talking to Josh, trying to convince him this item was a necessity, rather than a frivolous want.

Well, when we inherited it we knew the ink cartridges were in need of some cleaning first before we could print, but after several attempts to clean them per the manual's specific cleaning instructions, buying new ink cartridges, and spending a long conversation on the phone with a technical support person, we've realized something inside the machine itself is broken and is in need of repair. Since we payed nothing for this machine and still have a regular printer that functions perfectly fine, we are not going to invest any money in trying to get if fixed. It also means we can't copy anything, and we don't have a phone line to fax things, so that leaves only the scanner function working. But that's ok!! That's the function I was most excited about anyway. We got it at just the right time to scan in our ultrasounds pictures so you could all have the opportunity to "ooh" and "ahh" at our little miracle peanut. :)

I also wanted to try scanning in old pictures I have, so I looked through a photo book from my younger years and found several pictures of birthday. I figured this would be a fun place to start. So, thanks to my new scanner you get to enjoy some fun, but not always attractive, pictures of me through the years. I think I'm pretty brave to do this. No laughing allowed.

The Original Birthday:

November 17th, 1981

10:43pm

8lbs 2oz, 21 inches long

Desert Samaritan Hospital, Mesa, AZ

(yes, I know the stats from memory)

3rd birthday:

we're at Pioneer Park in Mesa

4th birthday:

I was in love with cabbage patch kids at this time,

so I had a cabbage patch cake and I also got a cabbage patch!

5th birthday:

6th birthday:

8th birthday:

I don't think I had a birthday party this year because we celebrated my baptism.

I was so proud to have my own set of scriptures.

9th birthday:

We're at Reed Park in Mesa. This is when the girly parties started!

All these girls stayed over for a sleep over too.

My poor parents!!

(yes, it's November and we're still in shorts. Love it.)

(I'm the one with the huge plaid shorts)

10th birthday:

Remember, I said no laughing!!

11th birthday:

This ended up being smack dab in the middle of 5th grade science camp!

But it was fun to have my friends around.

Sorry to Maranda and Malinda for your pictures ending up on here!

(I'm wearing the hot pink sweat suit. I loved that outfit!)

13th birthday:

entering teenagehood

this pretty much sums up how nerdy I was as a teen.

(man, my family had that brown table for a lot of years!!)

26th birthday:

Ah, finally a little more decent looking.

Guess I've changed some over the years!

I know there were several other memorable birthdays, I just don't have pictures from them. The most fun birthday I had that I can remember is when my friends threw me a surprise party, which really was a complete surprise! They even passed out flyers/invitations at school without me noticing. And the time when my friends made me a shirt that said something like "it's my birthday, wish me happy birthday" and made me wear it to school all day. Embarrassing. Another fun one was when there was a meteor shower the night of my birthday and Josh and I went out to the desert to watch it. Talk about being able to make a bunch of birthday wishes on shooting stars! I hope I have many more memorable birthdays to come!

Valentine's day love

So this is my very first post on the famous Wallbrechts blog page but I wanted to post a little Valentine's day love for my sweet wife Melanie. Some of the top reasons I love her are:
10. She is musical, something I am not. I love to watch her play her violin, sing in church, or just play around on the piano.
9. She is humble. She's talented, everyone knows it but you wouldn't know by talking with her.
8. She takes care of me. We're both busy people but she makes sure there's food in the house and the laundry gets done. I try to help out some too, but she takes care of things.
7. She is a stone cold fox. I mean seriously she has the whole package. The green eyes, the blond hair, and a body that could melt a grilled cheese sandwich from across the room.
6. She works hard for her money. It's great to have a sugarmomma.
5. Beyond working hard, she is a great nurse who loves her profession and has, does, and will touch to lives of many patients.
4. She is very adventurous. While I have some pretty crazy ideas, I can usually talk her into it. That includes: SCUBA, hiking the Grand Canyon, foreign travel, and interesting ethnic food.
3. She has a testimony of Jesus Christ and the Church. For her it is something she was born with.
2. She is pregnant with our sweet little baby; she will be a fantastic mother.
and
1. We will be together, forever. What a blessing!
Happy Valentine's Day sweetheart!

Exciting News to Share!

Ok, so Josh and I are spilling the beans and spreading the news:

We're going to have a baby!!!

Yes, that means I'm pregnant! We are so happy, excited, and ecstastic! I am 13 weeks along today due August 18th, and overall have been feeling pretty good so far, just some nausea that seems to be resolving now. I decided to wait until after my 12 week ultrasound to tell everyone, just so I could have peace of mind that everything was going well. Here are some pictures of our little peanut (and that's probably just how big he or she is right now!):

little fingers!!

This pregnancy comes has a huge blessing to us, and we can't be more grateful! I know some people know our story and others don't, so I'll share a little. I've had a hard time getting pregnant, and it took us 3 1/2 years to finally achieve a successful pregnancy. Two years ago I learned I have endometriosis, which most likely is the cause of my infertility. It was only discovered because I was trying to get pregnant, otherwise I wouldn't have suspected it. To make a long story short, I had to go through several cycles of fertility treatments including three IVF cycles (one which ended in a miscarriage), dozens of dr. visits and blood tests, a few acupuncture treatments, endless prayers and fasting, and finally the third IVF cycle worked! I could have had triplets because they transferred 3 embryos to me, but I am happy there is only one baby! :) The emotional rollercoaster that infertility treatment puts a person through has not been easy nor fun, but I am so thankful for the support I have had. And I will forever be grateful for this place:

Fertility Centers of Illinois

We also feel incredibly blessed to be living in Illinois while going through all this. Illinois is one of the only states in the country that has mandated infertility coverage, so all (I think all, if not most) insurances must provide some sort of infertility coverage. I have been lucky enough to have an insurance that covers infertility treatment 100%!! So where I could have ended up paying thousands and thousands of dollars, I've only had to pay a small fee for physician consults and medications. We can't help but feel we were watch over and guided in our decision to move to Chicago for Josh's schooling.

It's been a little strange but exciting to finally be able to look ahead to the future now and think about settling a family. The past nearly 6 years that we've been married have been really great for Josh and I, just the two of us. We've been able to do a lot and travel a lot together, and I will always treasure the things we've done. It's really been nice to work full-time as well. I've made great friendships and developed great skills that I can take with me anywhere. This pregnancy comes at a good time I think, where I finally feel ready to change my main focus and start raising a family.

I can't wait to start really feeling and looking pregnant. I hope to enjoy every moment of my pregnancy (I'll even try to enjoy the not-so-fun and uncomfortable moments) because I don't know how many times I'll be able to go through this. And I'll definitely keep posting my progress here on the blog!

White Lake

Lake Michigan is a beautiful lake, and throughout the year it changes colors depending on the weather.

The colors we usually see are light blue, dark blue, green, turquoise, gray, and sometimes even brown.

But the color I think is the most fun to see is

WHITE!

Earlier this week I went for a walk along the lakefront and this is what it looked like:

It looks even more cool when you can see it from up high. I borrowed this next picture from my friend's blog (sorry Danielle!! hope you don't mind). It's the view from her apartment.

(I know I'm lame to keep posting about the weather! Boring I know. It's just so fun to experience real winters!)

Our Home (part I)

By special request, I am posting some pictures of where we live. We love all the old buildings in Chicago, all the brick everywhere. We have found it quite charming to live in and old walk-up style building. Our building was built sometime in the early 1900's, so it's probably reaching 100 years old now. (It's in need of a few renovations as well!)


Our apartment building at the end of summer, early fall



Same view in the winter. We live in the building on the right on the first floor. The windows on the very bottom are considered the basement level, so we're at the level above that (you can't see our windows in this picture though).



Our street in the summer. It's so pretty and green! Our building is on the right side of this street. Can't really see it though. It's a nice quiet street.



Our street again, in the fall. So vibrant looking!



This last pictures was taken just yesterday! It's so fun to see the change in colors and seasons.


So, that's the outside of where we live. One of these days I'll post phase II with pictures of the inside of our apartment.